One of the more individualistic acoustic pianists of the '80s, '90s, and 2000s,
Frank Kimbrough is an "inside/outside" improviser whose primary influences range from
Bill Evans and
Keith Jarrett to
Cecil Taylor,
Paul Bley, and
Andrew Hill.
Kimbrough can play with as much elegance as
Evans or
Jarrett, but that doesn't prevent him from taking it "outside" and acknowledging
Taylor's innovations. His 1988 debut Lonely Woman (titled for the
Ornette Coleman composition), was celebrated for the arrival of a major new piano talent, while 2000's Quickening marked his first channeling of
Thelonious Monk's rhythmic inventions. Verrazano Moon, a 2008 duo date with vibraphonist
Joe Locke, delivered seven elegant, alternating originals and readings of more obscure tunes by
Duke Ellington ("Single Petal of a Rose") and
Monk ("Trinkle Tinkle"). The latter's influence proved pervasive as time went on, and in 2018,
Kimbrough issued his most ambitious recording to date, the six-disc box set, Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk, leading an inspired quartet that included drummer
Billy Drummond, bassist
Rufus Reid, and multi-reedist
Scott Robinson.
The pianist was born and raised in North Carolina, where he learned to appreciate a wide variety of jazz growing up, and did some gigs around Chapel Hill before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1980. During the year he lived in D.C.,
Kimbrough led his own trio and played a few hard bop gigs with
Webster Young and
Buck Hill. When
Bill Evans died in September 1980,
Kimbrough joined
Anthony Braxton for a two-night gig paying tribute to the influential pianist.
Kimbrough moved to New York in 1981, and he started recording under his own name five years later. Two cassette-only releases he did for Mapleshade, 1986's Star Crossed Lovers (an unaccompanied solo piano effort) and 1987's Double Visions (a duet with drummer
Steve Williams), are out of print, although Mapleshade released his 1988 trio recording, Lonely Woman, on CD in 1995. The '90s found
Kimbrough keeping busy by teaching at New York University and playing as a sideman in
Maria Schneider's big band (which he's been a member of since 1993) and the quartet of saxophonist
Ted Nash.
Kimbrough has also been a key member of
the Herbie Nichols Project, a band that has dedicated itself to playing and recording the music of the great but underexposed pianist
Herbie Nichols. The band has been directed by bassist
Ben Allison, who featured
Kimbrough on
the Project's
Love Is Proximity album on Soul Note, and on his own albums Seven Arrows and Medicine Wheel. The two musicians are also co-founders of the Jazz Composers Collective. Founded in 1992, the group features music by forward-thinking composers.
In 1998, Igmod released
Chant, a CD containing recordings
Kimbrough made in 1992 and 1997; Saturn's Child appeared a year later, followed by 2000's
Noumena. A collaboration with
Joe Locke resulted in the heady The Willow, released on Omnitone in 2001. The live album Quickening was released two years later on the same label. Since then,
Kimbrough has moved to the Palmetto label, releasing
Lullabluebye and
Play in 2004 and 2006, respectively. He followed with the solo piano offering Air in 2007 for Palmetto. He took a short break from the label with the duo offering Verrazano Moon in order to work with
Locke in 2008, then toured the globe. He returned to Palmetto for the acclaimed trio offering
Live at Kitano (with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer
Matt Wilson) that included a notable re-reading of
Andrew Hill's "Dusk."
Kimbrough, ever the road dog, worked in Asia, the U.S., and Europe over the next three years. In 2016 he turned in the trio offering
Solstice for Pirouet with bassist Jay Anderson and drummer
Jeff Hirshfield. The program offered a holistic portrait of the pianist as his band delivered the
Gershwin standard "Here Comes the Honey Man," alongside modernist originals by
Annette Peacock,
Carla Bley,
Paul Motian, and
Maria Schneider.
The following year,
Kimbrough was invited to play the Jazz Standard in New York City to celebrate the centennial of
Monk's birth. He chose a rhythm for the date that included
Drummond and
Reid. He also enlisted Johnson, whom he had worked with many times, and for a long period in
Schneider's orchestra. The gig was so successful that
Kimbrough's friend Matt Jones suggested this group record
Monk's entire oeuvre. In April of 2018, the pianist led both a trio and quartet at the Kitano to prepare the material (70 pieces) for recording. When it was time to commit the project to tape, they used
Matt Balitsaris' Maggie's Farm studios with the optimistic goal of cutting a disc a day for six days. The plan was altered to accommodate the musicians re-cording in two three-day intervals broken up by a respite of equal denomination. Most needed only a take or two to complete in various combinations -- from solo piano to quartet and all stops between. A six-disc box was issued by
Sunnyside in a deluxe package that November and garnered the most adulatory reviews of
Kimbrough's career to date. ~ Alex Henderson